Bloody Birthday DVD Review
Bloody Birthday DVD Review
Happy Birthday to Me meets The Bad Seed
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With so many great (or at least interesting) horror movies still not on Region One DVD (Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, The Evil), why does Bloody Birthday keep celebrating another year? This is just the latest of the "special editions".
I'd never seen it before, and hopefully won't be there for the next candle on this creaky cake. Bloody Birthday is a low-budget, poorly-acted 1981 horror movie about three kids — Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy), Curtis (Billy Jacoby), and Steven (Andy Freeman) — who are born simultaneously during a solar eclipse in Meadowvale, CA. at the precise moment of a murder (at least, I think so; the movie's under-lit, and under-directed). This somehow makes them all blank slates for pure evil. Who the evil is, or where it comes from, we don't know… but I believe it has something to do with Uranus.
Unfortunately, the magical or astrological angle isn't played up at all. The kids' robotic creepiness (The Bad Seed, and The Other got it right) is only exploited a little bit, making for a pretty suspenseless and nearly bloodless flick. There is a birthday party scene, but let's just say that Damien's got nothing to worry about.
When Debbie's father, who just happens to be the town sheriff, goes to the school to investigate (a jump rope handle was left at the scene of a crime), he asks the fifth-graders if they know what "murder" is… he soon finds out the hard way that indeed they do! The focus is on Debbie and her dispassionate hatred of her elder sister, Beverly (Julie Brown), whom she stalks and tries to kill — but only after many gratuitous nude scenes from the budding comedienne, who thankfully went on to bigger and better things ("The Homecoming Queen Has Got A Gun", Earth Girls Are Easy). This could have been a good dynamic, but there's not much interplay between the two characters.
When all is said and done Bloody Birthday is just another mediocre 80s cash-in — a quick-n-dirty horror which just happens to have children as the sociopathic slashers.
The extras on the DVD are pretty routine, but it is kind of funny to hear the now-elderly producer, Max Rosenberg's blunt and insulting ramblings on everything from the "stupid" director to the "naked girl" to all the "diseased Canadians." Strange stuff. But the shock too soon wears off and the brain goes numb as the static, poorly lit interview conducted by American Cinematheque programmer Dennis Bartok goes on and on for 15 seemingly unedited minutes.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson